Abstract

‘Madness cast out’ examines the dramatic changes in the psychiatric landscape that marked the late 20th century. These include the eclipse of psychoanalysis, a shift back to biological accounts of madness, the rapid growth of psychopharmacology and deinstitutionalization, partly due to the development of anti-psychotic drugs, but largely for reasons of cost. The profits available from new classes of drugs have encouraged the transformation of the ordinary vicissitudes of human existence into new ‘diseases’ allegedly caused by ‘chemical imbalances’. However, despite the massive expansion of neuroscientific research that the biological turn in psychiatry and the associated drugs revolution have funded, our knowledge of brain function remains in its infancy.